Shortly after the economic crash of 2008, the Queen of England gathered her nation’s top economists and asked the simple question — how did you guys not see this coming?
The economists said they had underestimated the existence of systemic risk. Really? Top economists failed to recognize systemic risk in a capitalist system? The boom and bust cycle is taught in high school economics. Instability in the process of capital accumulation goes as far back as a speculative bubble that formed in the Tulip market of 1630s Netherlands.
Crisis is to a capitalist system what Jack-O-Lanterns are to Halloween. In the presence of a crisis, capital must have somewhere to transfer its surplus. The transfer can be to stocks, housing, bonds or any commodity that can be invested in. The stupidity, irrationality and dogma of our economic system is best demonstrated in the way we construct every metropolitan area on the planet.
Cities are built not for people to live in, but for speculative purposes uninterested in building a useful urban environment for the mass of the population. Our cities consist of either high rises for the super rich, or lavish shopping complexes owned by the super rich. Whether it’s Dubai or Chicago, cities are packed with huge, swanky apartment buildings with absolutely no one living in them. It simply makes more sense for a Russian oligarch to buy a Manhattan high rise for speculative investment than to use that high rise to provide people with housing. If you don’t believe me, consider numerous 60 Minutes segments and Forbes articles about entire cities throughout China that not a single person lives in.
What we are dealing with here is an urban process several centuries old. In the 1850s, Napoléon III of France directed a man named Georges-Eugéne Haussmann to commence an enormous renovation of Paris. Haussmann proceeded to demolish the old neighborhoods at Paris’ center, expelling the population that lived there. What stands there today is modern Paris. One could certainly deem this an early example of gentrification.
The era after World War II also contains this form of urbanization at its most extreme level. During this time suburbanization emerged, and “sprawl” cities such as Houston and Los Angeles rapidly grew. The consequences, however, involved the dispossession of racial minorities living in American cities. This discontent culminated in the Civil Rights Movement and the urban unrest so characteristic of the 1960s.
The history of our cities is one of exploitation and despair. This experience is not singular to the United States or the 21st century. Geographer David Harvey may best surmise this never-ending process of oppressive urbanization, saying “Capital has no interest in building cities for people, only profit.”
Our dire need for a “Right to the City” comes at a contemporary moment of widespread militarization of urban life by local police forces. The police will brutally crush any protest that threatens the concentrated power of those who control urbanization and capital accumulation. The bourgeoisie has no qualms with instituting this violent, insane form of urbanization by force. If we stand idly by, we will have no control over the development of our cities or the structure of our lives.
luwrobin@indiana.edu
